NSW mental health funding 'inadequate'

Wed 16 Feb 2011, 8:33 AM AEDT

The New South Wales Greens have attacked the State Government for inadequately funding community based mental health services.

Greens MP John Kaye says New South Wales is the worst performing state, with less than 40 per cent of people who are discharged from a mental health bed in a hospital followed up once they are back in the community.

Mr Kaye says the government must stop putting community care and hospital care in competition with each other.

"To match the Victorian level of community beds we need to increase our expenditure by a factor of four-and-a-half," Mr Kaye said.

"That means an additional hundreds of millions of dollars, but that is money well spent in order to make sure we reduce hospitalisations in the long run and also reduce the overall cost to the budget."